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Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (born Leslie
Lynch King, Jr.; July 14, 1913 ‚Äď December 26, 2006) was
the 38thPresident of the United
States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40thVice President of the United
States serving from 1973 to 1974. As the first person appointed
to the vice-presidency under the terms of the 25th
Amendment, when he became President upon Richard Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974,
he also became the only President of the United States who was
elected neither President nor Vice-President.

Following his years as president, Ford remained active in the
Republican Party. After experiencing health problems and being
admitted to the hospital four times in 2006, Ford died in his home on
December 26, 2006. He lived to an older age than any other U.S.
president, dying at the age of 93 years and 165 days.

Early life

Childhood

Ford was
born as Leslie Lynch King, Jr. on July 14, 1913,
at 3202 Woolworth
Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska, where his
parents lived with his paternal grandparents. His father was
Leslie Lynch King, Sr., a
wool trader and son of prominent banker Charles Henry and Martha King.His mother
was the former Dorothy Ayer
Gardner. Dorothy separated from King Sr. just sixteen days
after her son's birth. She took her son with her to the Oak
Park, Illinois home of her
sister Tannisse and her husband, Clarence Haskins James.From there
she moved to the home of her parents, Levi Addison Gardner and his
wife, the former Adele Augusta Ayer, in Grand
Rapids, Michigan.
Dorothy and Leslie King divorced in December 1913; she gained full
custody of their son. Ford's paternal grandfather Charles Henry
King paid child support until shortly before his death in
1930.

Leslie Lynch King, Jr. (later known as
Gerald R.

Ford) at one year of age in 1914

Gerald Ford later said his biological father had a history of
hitting his mother. James M. Cannon, a member of the Ford
administration, wrote in a Ford biography that the Kings'
separation and divorce were sparked when, a few days after Ford's
birth, Leslie King threatened Dorothy with a butcher knife and
threatened to kill her, Ford, and Ford's nursemaid. Ford later told
confidantes that his father had first hit his mother on their
honeymoon for smiling at another man.

After two and a half years with her parents, on February 1, 1916
Dorothy King married Gerald Rudolff
Ford, a salesman in a family owned paint and varnish company.
They then called her son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr. The
future president was never formally adopted, however, and he did not legally change his
name until December 3, 1935; he also used a more conventional
spelling of his middle name. He was raised in Grand
Rapids with his three half-brothers by his mother's second
marriage: Thomas Gardner Ford (1918‚Äď1995), Richard Addison Ford
(born 1924), and James Francis Ford (1927‚Äď2001).

Ford also had three half-siblings from his father's second
marriage: Marjorie King (1921‚Äď1993), Leslie Henry King (1923‚Äď1976),
and Patricia Jane King (born 1925). They never saw each other as
children and he did not know them at all. Ford was not aware of his
biological father until he was 17, when his parents told him about
the circumstances of his birth. That year his father Leslie King,
whom Ford described as a "carefree, well-to-do man," approached
Ford while he was waiting tables in a Grand Rapids restaurant. The
two "maintained a sporadic contact" until Leslie King, Sr.'s
death.

Ford maintained his distance emotionally, saying, "My stepfather
was a magnificent person and my mother equally wonderful. So I
couldn't have written a better prescription for a superb family
upbringing."

Scouting and athletics

Ford was involved in The Boy
Scouts of America, and attained that program's highest rank,
Eagle Scout. In
subsequent years, Ford received the Distinguished Eagle Scout
Award in May 1970 and Silver
Buffalo Award from the Boy Scouts of America. He is the only US
president who was an Eagle Scout. Scouting
was so important to Ford that his family asked that Scouts
participate in his funeral. About 400 Eagle Scouts were part of the
funeral procession, where they formed an honor guard as the casket
went by in front of the museum. A few selected scouts served as
ushers inside the National Cathedral.

Ford attended Grand Rapids South High School and was a star athlete
and captain of his football team. In 1930, he was selected to
the All-City team of the Grand
Rapids City League. He also attracted the attention of college
recruiters.

Attending
the University of
Michigan as an undergraduate, Ford played center and linebacker for the school‚Äôs football team and
helped the Wolverines
to undefeated seasons and national
titles in 1932 and 1933. The team suffered a steep
decline in his 1934 senior year, however, winning only one game.
Ford was the team‚Äôs star nonetheless, and after a game during which
Michigan held heavily favored Minnesota (the eventual
national champion) to a scoreless tie in the first half, assistant
coach Bennie Oosterbaan later
said, ‚ÄúWhen I walked into the dressing room at half time, I had
tears in my eyes I was so proud of them. Ford and [Cedric] Sweet
played their hearts out. They were everywhere on defense.‚ÄĚ Ford
himself later recalled, ‚ÄúDuring 25 years in the rough-and-tumble
world of politics, I often thought of the experiences before,
during, and after that game in 1934. Remembering them has helped me
many times to face a tough situation, take action, and make every
effort possible despite adverse odds.‚ÄĚ His teammates later voted
Ford their most valuable player, with one assistant coach noting,
‚ÄúThey felt Jerry was one guy who would stay and fight in a losing
cause.‚ÄĚ

During the
same season, in a game against the University of Chicago, Ford ‚Äúbecame the only future U.S. president to
tackle a future Heisman Trophy winner
when he brought down running back Jay
Berwanger, who would win the first Heisman the following year.‚ÄĚ
In 1934 Gerald Ford was selected for the Eastern Team on the
Shriner‚Äôs East West Crippled Children game at San Francisco (a
benefit for crippled children), played on January 1, 1935.As part of
the 1935 Collegiate All-Star football team, Ford played against the
Chicago Bears in an exhibition game at
Soldier
Field. The University of Michigan retired Ford's
#48 jersey in 1994.

Ford retained his interest in football and his alma mater
throughout life, occasionally attending games. Ford also visited
with players and coaches during practices, at one point asking to
join the players in the huddle. Ford often had the Naval band play
the University of Michigan fight song, The Victors, prior to state events instead
of Hail to the Chief. He
also selected the song to be played during his funeral procession
at the U.S. Capitol. On his death in December 2006, the University of Michigan
Marching Band played the fight song for him one final time, for
his last ride from the Gerald R.Ford Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Ford hoped to attend Yale's law school beginning in 1935 while
serving as boxing coach, assistant varsity football coach, and
teacher of JV cheerleading, at which he was very good because he
knew how to do several tucks and back handsprings. Yale officials
initially denied his admission to the law school, because of his
full-time coaching responsibilities. He spent the summer
of 1937 as a student at the University
of Michigan Law School and was eventually admitted in the spring of 1938
to Yale Law School. Ford earned his LL.B. degree in 1941
(later amended to Juris Doctor),
graduating in the top 25 percent of his class. His introduction to
politics came in the summer of 1940 when he worked in Wendell Willkie's presidential
campaign.While attending Yale Law
School, he joined a group of students led by R. Douglas Stuart,
Jr., and signed a petition to enforce the 1939 Neutrality Act. The petition was circulated
nationally and was the inspiration for the America First Committee, a group
determined to keep the U.S. out of World
War II.

Ford graduated from law school in 1941, and was admitted to the
Michigan bar shortly there after. In May
1941, he opened a Grand Rapids law practice with a friend, Philip
Buchen, who would later serve as Ford's White House counsel.
But
overseas developments caused a change in plans, and Ford responded
to the attack on
Pearl Harbor by enlisting in the Navy.

Naval service in World War II

Ford received a commission as ensign in the U.S.Naval Reserve on April 13, 1942.
On April
20, he reported for active duty to the V-5 instructor school at
Annapolis, Maryland.After one month of training, he went to Navy
Preflight School in Chapel Hill, North
Carolina, where he
was one of 83 instructors and taught elementary seamanship,
ordnance, gunnery, first aid and military drill. In
addition, he coached in all nine sports that were offered, but
mostly in swimming, boxing and football. During the one year he was
at the Preflight School, he was promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade on June 2,
1942, and to Lieutenant in March
1943.

Applying
for sea duty, Ford was sent in May 1943 to the pre-commissioning
detachment for the new aircraft carrier USS
Monterey, at New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New
Jersey. From the ship's commissioning on June 17,
1943 until the end of December 1944, Ford served as the assistant
navigator, Athletic Officer, and antiaircraft battery officer on
board the Monterey. While he was on board, the carrier
participated in many actions in the Pacific Theater with the
Third and Fifth Fleets during the fall of
1943 and in 1944. In 1943, the carrier helped secure Makin Island in the Gilberts, and participated
in carrier strikes against Kavieng, New Ireland in 1943.During the spring of
1944, the Monterey supported landings at Kwajalein and Eniwetok and
participated in carrier strikes in the Marianas, Western
Carolines, and northern New Guinea, as well as in the Battle of the Philippine
Sea.After overhaul, from September to November
1944, aircraft from the Monterey launched strikes against
Wake
Island, participated in strikes in the Philippines and
Ryukyus, and supported the landings at Leyte and Mindoro.

Although
the ship was not damaged by Japanese forces, the Monterey was one of several
ships damaged by the typhoon that hit
AdmiralWilliam Halsey's Third Fleet on December 18‚Äď19, 1944. The Third
Fleet lost three destroyers and over 800
men during the typhoon. The Monterey was damaged by a
fire, which was started by several of the ship's aircraft tearing
loose from their cables and colliding on the hangar deck. During
the storm, Ford narrowly avoided becoming a casualty himself. As he
was going to his battle station on the bridge of the ship in the
early morning of December 18, the ship rolled twenty-five degrees,
which caused Ford to lose his footing and slide toward the edge of
the deck. The two-inch steel ridge around the edge of the carrier
slowed him enough so he could roll, and he twisted into the catwalk
below the deck. As he later stated, "I was lucky; I could have
easily gone overboard."

Because of the extent of the fires, Admiral Halsey ordered Captain
Ingersoll to abandon ship. Instead Captain Ingersoll ordered Ford
to lead a fire brigade below. After five hours he and his team had
put out the fire.

After the
fire the Monterey was declared unfit for service, and the
crippled carrier reached Ulithi on December
21 before continuing across the Pacific to Bremerton, Washington where it underwent repairs. On December 24,
1944 at Ulithi, Ford was detached from the ship and sent to the
Athletic Department of the Navy Pre-Flight School at Saint Mary's College of
California, where he was assigned to the Athletic Department
until April 1945. One of his duties was to coach football.
From the
end of April 1945 to January 1946, he was on the staff of the Naval
Reserve Training Command, Naval Air Station, Glenview,
Illinois as the Staff Physical and Military Training
Officer. On October 3, 1945 he was promoted to Lieutenant
Commander. In January 1946, he was sent to the
Separation Center, Great Lakes to be processed out. He was released from
active duty under honorable conditions on February 23, 1946. On
June 28, 1946, the Secretary of the Navy
accepted Ford's resignation from the Naval Reserve.

Ford was a member of several civic organizations, including the
Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks, American
Legion, Veterans of Foreign
Wars, and AMVETS. Gerald R. Ford was
initiated into Freemasonry on September
30, 1949. He later said in 1975, "When I took my obligation as a
master mason ‚ÄĒ incidentally, with my three younger brothers ‚ÄĒ I
recalled the value my own father attached to that order. But I had
no idea that I would ever be added to the company of the Father of
our Country and 12 other members of the order who also served as
Presidents of the United States."

At the time of his engagement, Ford was campaigning for what would
be his first of thirteen terms as a member of the United States House of
Representatives. The wedding was delayed until shortly before
the elections because, as The New
York Times reported in a 1974 profile of Betty Ford, "Jerry was
running for Congress and wasn't sure how voters might feel about
his marrying a divorced ex-dancer."

House of Representatives

After
returning to Grand
Rapids, Ford became active in local Republican politics,
and supporters urged him to take on Bartel J.Jonkman, the incumbent Republican
congressman. Military service had changed his view of the world; "I
came back a converted internationalist", Ford wrote,
"and of course our congressman at that time was an avowed,
dedicated isolationist. And I
thought he ought to be replaced. Nobody thought I could win. I
ended up winning two to one."During his first campaign in 1948, Ford visited
voters at their doorsteps and as they left the factories where they
worked. Ford also visited local farms where, in one instance, a
wager resulted in Ford spending two weeks milking cows following
his election victory. Ford was known to his colleagues in the House
as a "Congressman's Congressman".

Ford was a member of the House of Representatives for twenty-five
years, holding the Grand Rapids congressional district seat from 1949
to 1973. It was a tenure largely notable for its modesty. As an
editorial in The New York
Times described him, Ford "saw himself as a negotiator and
a reconciler, and the record shows it: he did not write a single
piece of major legislation in his entire career."Appointed to the
House
Appropriations Committee two years after being elected, he was
a prominent member of the Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee. Ford described his philosophy as
"a moderate in domestic affairs, an internationalist in foreign
affairs, and a conservative in
fiscal policy."

In the early 1950s, Ford declined offers to run for both the Senate
and the Michigan governorship. Rather, his ambition was to become
Speaker of the House.

Warren Commission

In November 1963, President Lyndon
B.Johnson
appointed Ford to the Warren
Commission, a special task force set up to investigate the
assassination of President John F.
Kennedy. Ford was assigned to prepare a biography of
Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused
assassin.In 1997 the Assassination Records Review
Board (ARRB) released a document that revealed that Ford had
altered the first draft of the report to read: "A bullet had
entered the base of the back of [Kennedy's] neck slightly to the
right of the spine." Some believed that Ford had elevated the
location of the wound from its true location in the back to the
neck to support the single bullet theory. ( ) The original first
draft of the Warren Commission Report stated that a bullet had
entered Kennedy's "back at a point slightly above the shoulder and to the right of the spine." Ford replied in an introduction to
a new edition of the Warren Commission Report in 2004:

I have been accused of changing some wording on the
Warren Commission Report to favor the lone-assassin
conclusion.

That is absurd.

Here is what the draft said: "A bullet had entered his
back at a point slightly above the shoulder and to the right of the
spine.‚ÄĚ To any reasonable person, ‚Äúabove the shoulder and to the
right‚ÄĚ sounds very high and way off the side ‚ÄĒ and that‚Äôs what it
sounded like to me.

That would have given the totally wrong
impression.

Technically, from a medical perspective, the bullet
entered just to the right at the base of the neck, so my
recommendation to the other members was to change it to say, ‚ÄúA
bullet had entered the back of his neck, slightly to the right of
the spine.‚ÄĚ After further investigation, we then unanimously agreed
that it should read, ‚ÄúA bullet had entered the base of his neck
slightly to the right of the spine.‚ÄĚ As with any report, there were
many clarifications and language changes suggested by several of
us.

Ford's description matched a drawing prepared for the Commission under the
direction of Dr. James J. Humes, supervisor of Kennedy's autopsy,
who in his testimony to the Commission said three times
that the entrance wound was in the "low neck." The Commission was
not shown the autopsy photographs. The Commission's work continues
to be debated in the public arena.

In the foreword to his book, A Presidential Legacy and The
Warren Commission, Ford said the CIA
destroyed or kept from investigators critical secrets connected to
the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He said the
commission's probe put "certain classified and potentially damaging
operations in danger of being exposed." The CIA's reaction, he
added, "was to hide or destroy some information, which can easily
be misinterpreted as collusion in JFK's assassination."

According
to a 1963 FBI memo
released in 2008, Ford secretly provided the FBI with information
regarding two of his fellow commission members, both of whom were
dubious about the FBI's conclusions regarding the
assassination. The FBI position was that President Kennedy
was shot by a single gunman firing from the Texas Book Depository.
Another 1963 memo released in 1978 stated that Representative Ford
volunteered to advise the FBI regarding the content of the
commission's deliberations, provided that his involvement with the
bureau was kept confidential, a condition which the bureau
approved. Ford generally believed in the single assassin theory.
According to the same reports, Ford generally had strong ties to
the FBI and J.Edgar Hoover.

House Minority Leader

In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon
Johnson led a landslide victory for his party, securing another
term as president and taking 36 seats from Republicans in the House
of Representatives. Following the election, members of the
Republican delegation looked to select a new Minority
Leader. Three members approached Ford to see if he would be
willing to serve; after consulting with his family, he agreed.
After a
closely contested election, Ford was chosen to replace Charles Halleck of Indiana as Minority Leader.

Ford had 140 votes compared to the 295 seats held by the Democrats.
As a result, the Johnson Administration was able to propose and
pass a series of programs termed by President Johnson as the
"Great Society". During the first
session of the of the Eighty-ninth Congress alone, the
Johnson Administration submitted eighty-seven bills to Congress,
and Johnson signed eighty-four, or 96%, arguably the most
successful legislative agenda in U.S. Congressional history.

Criticism over the Johnson Administration's handling of the
Vietnam War began to grow in 1966, with
Ford and Congressional Republicans expressing concern that the
United States was not doing what was necessary to win the war.
Public sentiment also began to move against Johnson, and the
1966
midterm elections saw a 47-seat swing in favor of the
Republicans. This was not sufficient to give Republicans a majority
in the House, but the victory did give Ford the opportunity to
prevent the passage of further Great Society programs.

Ford's private criticism of the Vietnam war became public following
a speech from the floor of the House, in which he questioned
whether the White House had a clear plan to bring the conflict to a
successful conclusion. The speech angered President Johnson, who
accused Ford of playing "too much football without a helmet."

As
Minority Leader in the House, Ford appeared in a popular series of
televised press conferences with
famed Illinois Senator Everett
Dirksen, in which they proposed Republican alternatives to
Johnson's policies. Many in the press jokingly called this
"The Ev and Jerry Show". Johnson said of Ford at the time, "That
Gerald Ford. He can't fart and chew gum at the same time." The
press, used to sanitizing LBJ's salty language, reported this as
"Gerald Ford can't walk and chew gum at the same time."

Ford's role shifted under President
Nixon to being an advocate for the White House agenda. Congress
passed several of Nixon's proposals, including the National Environmental Policy
Act and the Tax Reform Act of
1969. Another high-profile victory for the Republican minority
was the State and Local Fiscal Assistance act. Passed in 1972, the
act established a Revenue Sharing
program for state and local governments. Ford's leadership was
instrumental in shepherding revenue sharing through congress, and
culminated in a bipartisan coalition that supported the bill with
223 votes in favor (compared to 185 against).

During the eight years (1965‚Äď1973) he served as Minority Leader,
Ford won many friends in the House because of his fair leadership
and inoffensive personality. An office building in the U.S.
Capitol
Complex, House Annex 2, was renamed for Gerald Ford as the Ford House
Office Building.

Vice Presidency, 1973‚Äď74

On October 10, 1973, Vice PresidentSpiro Agnew resigned and then pleaded no contest to criminal charges of tax
evasion and money laundering, part of a negotiated resolution to a
scheme wherein he accepted $29,500 in bribes while governor of
Maryland. According to The New
York Times, "Nixon sought advice from senior Congressional
leaders about a replacement. The advice was unanimous. 'We gave
Nixon no choice but Ford,' House
SpeakerCarl Albert recalled
later".

Following President Nixon's
resignation, newly-sworn President and Mrs. Ford walk the Nixons to
their helicopter.

Ford was nominated to take Agnew's position on October 12, the
first time the vice-presidential vacancy provision of the 25th
Amendment had been implemented. The United States Senate voted 92 to 3 to
confirm Ford on November 27. Only three Senators, all Democrats, had
voted against Ford's confirmation: Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, Thomas Eagleton of
Missouri and William
Hathaway of Maine. On
December 6, the House confirmed Ford by a vote of 387 to 35. One
hour after the confirmation vote in the House, Ford took the oath
of office as Vice President of the United States.

Ford's brief tenure as Vice-President was little noted by the
media. Instead, reporters were preoccupied by the
continuing revelations about criminal acts during the 1972 presidential
election and allegations of cover-ups within the White House.

Following Ford's appointment, the Watergate investigation continued
until Chief of StaffAlexander Haig contacted Ford on
August 1, 1974, and told him that "smoking
gun" evidence had been found. The evidence left little doubt
that President Nixon had been a part of the Watergate cover-up.
At the
time, Ford and his wife, Betty, were living in suburban Virginia,
waiting for their expected move into the newly designated vice
president's residence in Washington, D.C. However, "Al Haig [asked] to come over and
see me," Ford later related, "to tell me that there would be a new
tape released on a Monday, and he
said the evidence in there was devastating and there would probably
be either an impeachment or a resignation. And he said, 'I'm just
warning you that you've got to be prepared, that things might
change dramatically and you could become President.' And I said,
'Betty, I don't think we're ever going to live in the vice
president's house.'"

Presidency, 1974‚Äď77

Accession

When Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal on August
9, 1974, Ford assumed the presidency, making him the only person to
assume the vice-presidency and the presidency without having been
voted into either office. Immediately after taking the oath of office
in the East Room of the
White
House, he spoke to the assembled audience in a speech
broadcast live to the nation. Ford noted the peculiarity of
his position: "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as
your president by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as
your president with your prayers." He went on to state:

I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I
will not shirk it. Those who nominated and confirmed me as Vice
President were my friends and are my friends. They were of both
parties, elected by all the people and acting under the
Constitution in their name. It is only fitting then that I should
pledge to them and to you that I will be the President of all the
people.

A portion of the speech would later be memorialized with a plaque
at the entrance to his presidential museum.

On August
20, Ford nominated former New York Governor Nelson
Rockefeller to fill the vice presidency he had vacated.
Rockefeller's top competitor had been George H.W.Bush.
Rockefeller underwent extended hearings before Congress, which
caused embarrassment when it was revealed he made massive gifts to
senior aides, such as Henry
Kissinger. Although conservative Republicans were not pleased
that Rockefeller was picked, most of them did vote for his
confirmation, and his nomination passed both the House and Senate.
However, some, including Barry
Goldwater, voted against him.

Pardon of Nixon

On September 8, 1974, Ford issued Proclamation 4311, which gave
Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any
crimes he may have committed against the United States while
President. In a televised broadcast to the nation, Ford explained
that he felt the pardon was in the best interests of the country,
and that the Nixon family's situation "is a tragedy in which we all
have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must
write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and
if I can, I must." At the same time as he announced the Nixon
pardon, Ford introduced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War draft dodgers who had fled to countries such as
Canada. Unconditional amnesty, however, did not come about until
the Jimmy Carter Presidency.

The Nixon pardon was highly controversial. Critics derided the move
and claimed, a "corrupt bargain" had
been struck between the men. They claimed Ford's pardon was
quid pro quo, in exchange for
Nixon's resignation that elevated Ford to the Presidency. According
to Bob Woodward, Nixon Chief of Staff
Alexander Haig proposed a pardon deal
to Ford. In his book Shadow, Woodward states that Haig
entered Ford's office on August 1, 1974 while Ford was still Vice
President and Nixon had yet to resign. Haig told Ford that there
were three pardon options: (1) Nixon could pardon himself and
resign; (2) Nixon could pardon his aides involved in Watergate and
then resign; or (3) Nixon could agree to leave in return for an
agreement that the new president would pardon him. After listing
these options, Haig handed Ford various papers; one of these papers
included a discussion of the president's legal authority to pardon,
and another sheet was a draft pardon form that only needed Ford's
signature and Nixon's name to make it legal. Woodward summarizes
the setting between Haig and Ford as follows: "Even if Haig offered
no direct words on his views, the message was almost certainly
sent. An emotional man, Haig was incapable of concealing his
feelings; those who worked closely with him rarely found him
ambiguous."

Despite the situation, Ford never accepted any offer from Haig. He
later decided to pardon Nixon for other reasons, primarily the
friendship he and Nixon shared. Regardless, historians believe the
controversy was one of the major reasons Ford lost the election in 1976,
an observation with which Ford concurred. In an editorial at the
time, The New York Times
stated that the Nixon pardon was "a profoundly unwise, divisive and
unjust act" that in a stroke had destroyed the new president's
"credibility as a man of judgment, candor and competence."

Ford's first press secretary and close friend Jerald Franklin terHorst resigned his post
in protest after the announcement of President Nixon's full pardon.
Ford also voluntarily appeared before Congress on October 17, 1974 to give
sworn testimony‚ÄĒthe only time a sitting president has done so‚ÄĒabout
the pardon.

After Ford left the White House in 1977, intimates said that the
former President privately justified his pardon of Nixon by
carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of Burdick v.United States, a 1915 U.S.Supreme
Court decision which stated that a pardon indicated a
presumption of guilt, and that acceptance of a pardon was
tantamount to a confession of that guilt.In 2001, the John F.
Kennedy Library Foundation awarded the John F.
KennedyProfile in Courage
Award to Ford for his pardon of Nixon. In presenting the
award to Ford, Senator Ted Kennedy said
that he had initially been opposed to the pardon of Nixon, but
admitted that history had proved Ford to have made the correct
decision.

Midterm elections

The 1974 Congressional midterm elections took place less than three
months after Ford assumed office and in the wake of the Watergate
scandal. The Democratic Party was able to turn voter
dissatisfaction into large gains in the House elections, taking
49 seats from the Republican Party, and increasing their majority
to 291 of the 435 seats. This was one more than the number needed
(290) for a two-thirds majority, necessary to override a
Presidential veto (or to submit a
Constitutional Amendment). Perhaps due in part to this fact, the
94th Congress overrode
the highest percentage of vetoes since Andrew Johnson was President of the United
States (1865‚Äď1869). Even Ford's old, reliably Republican seat was
taken by Democrat Richard
VanderVeen, defeating Republican Robert VanderLaan. In the
Senate
elections, the Democratic majority became 61 in the 100-seat
body.

Domestic policy

The economy was a great
concern during the Ford administration. In response to rising
inflation, Ford went before the American
public in October 1974 and asked them to "Whip
Inflation Now." As part of this
program, he urged people to wear "WIN" buttons. In hindsight, this was
viewed as simply a public relationsgimmick without offering any effective means
of solving the underlying problems. At the time, inflation was
approximately seven percent.

Ford was confronted with a potential swine
flupandemic. Sometime in the early
1970s, an influenza strain H1N1 shifted from a form of flu that affected primarily
pigs and crossed over to humans. On February 5, 1976, an Army recruit at Fort
Dix mysteriously died and four fellow soldiers were
hospitalized; health
officials announced that "swine flu" was the cause. Soon
after, public health officials in the Ford administration urged
that every person in the United States be vaccinated. Although the vaccination program was
plagued by delays and public relations problems, some 25% of the
population was vaccinated by the time the program was canceled in
December of that year. The vaccine was blamed for twenty-five
deaths; more people died from the shots than from the swine
flu.

In this Land of the Free, it is right, and by nature it
ought to be, that all men and all women are equal before the
law.

Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the
United States of America, to remind all Americans that it is
fitting and just to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment adopted by
the Congress of the United States of America, in order to secure
legal equality for all women and men, do hereby designate and
proclaim August 26, 1975, as Women's Equality Day.

As president, Ford's position on abortion
was that he supported "a federal constitutional amendment that
would permit each one of the 50 States to make the choice." This
had also been his position as House Minority Leader in response to
the 1973 Supreme Court case of Roe
v.Wade, which he
opposed. Ford came under criticism for a 60 Minutes interview his wife Betty gave in
1975, in which she stated that Roe v.Wade was a
"great, great decision." During his later life, Ford would identify
as pro-choice.

Budget

Ford ran a budget deficit (which he had
inherited from his predecessors) every year he was President.
Despite his reservations about how this program ultimately would be
funded in an era of tight public budgeting, Ford still signed the
Education for
All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, which established
special education throughout the
United States. Ford expressed "strong support for full educational
opportunities for our handicapped children" according to the
official White House press release for the bill signing.

Ford attended the inaugural meeting of the Group of Seven (G7)
industrialized nations (initially the G5) in 1975 and secured
membership for Canada. Ford supported international solutions to
issues. "We live in an interdependent world and, therefore, must
work together to resolve common economic problems," he said in a
1974 speech.

Middle East

In his
Presidential memoir, Ford writes, ‚ÄúNo foreign-policy challenges
occupied more of my time in the early months of 1975 than the
deteriorating situations in both the Middle
East and Indochina.‚ÄĚ In Indochina,
Ford faced a foreign policy crisis with the Mayaguez
Incident.In May 1975, shortly after the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia, Cambodians seized the American merchant ship
Mayaguez in international waters. Ford dispatched
Marines to rescue the
crew, but the Marines landed on the wrong island and met
unexpectedly stiff resistance just as, unknown to the U.S., the
Mayaguez sailors were being released. In the operation,
two Military transport helocopters carrying the Marines for the
assault operation were shot down, 41 U.S. servicemen were killed
and 50 wounded while approximately 60 Khmer Rouge soldiers were
killed.

In the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, two on-going
international disputes developed into crises. The ongoing Cyprus dispute
turned into a crisis with the Turkish invasion of Cyprus,
causing extreme strain within the NATO
alliance. In mid-August, the government
withdrew Greece from the NATO military structure; in mid-September
1974 the Senate and House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted
to halt military aid to Turkey. Ford, concerned with both the
effect of this on Turkish-American relations and the deterioration
of security on NATO‚Äôs eastern front, vetoed the bill. A second bill
was passed by the house, and vetoed, although a compromise was
accepted to continue aid until the end of the year. As Ford
expected, Turkish relations were considerably
disrupted until 1978.

In the continuing Arab-Israeli
conflict, although the initial cease fire
had been implemented to end active conflict in the Yom Kippur War, Kissinger‚Äôs continuing
shuttle diplomacy was showing
little progress. Ford considered it ‚Äústalling‚ÄĚ and wrote, ‚ÄúTheir
[Israeli] tactics frustrated the Egyptians and made me mad as
hell.‚Äô During Kissinger‚Äôs shuttle to Israel in early March 1975, a
last minute reversal to consider further withdrawal, prompted a
cable from Ford to Prime Minister Yitzak
Rabin, which included;

I wish to express my profound disappointment over
Israel‚Äôs attitude in the course of the negotiations‚Ä¶ Failure of the
negotiation will have a far reaching impact on the region and on
our relations.

I have given instructions for a reassessment of United
States policy in the region, including our relations with Israel,
with the aim of ensuring that overall American interests‚Ä¶ are
protected.

You will be notified of our decision

On March 24, Ford received congressional leaders of both parties
and informed them of the reassessment of the administration
policies in the Middle East. There was only one way a
‚Äúreassessment‚ÄĚ could have a practical meaning: to cancel or suspend
further aid to Israel. And this indeed was what happened. For six
months between March and September 1975 the United States refused
to conclude any new arms agreements with Israel. Rabin notes it was
‚ÄĚan innocent-sounding term that heralded one of the worst periods
in American-Israeli relations.‚ÄĚ As could be expected, the announced
reassessments upset the American Jewish community and Israel‚Äôs
well-wishers in Congress. On May 21, Ford ‚Äúexperienced a real
shock,‚ÄĚ seventy-six senators wrote him a letter urging him to be
‚Äúresponsive‚ÄĚ to Israel‚Äôs request for $2.59 billion in military and
economic aid. Ford felt truly annoyed and thought the chance for
peace was jeopardized. It was, since the September 1974 ban on arms
to Turkey, the second major congressional intrusion upon the
President‚Äôs [foreign policy] prerogatives. The following summer
months were described by Ford as an American-Israeli ‚Äúwar of
nerves‚ÄĚ or ‚ÄĚtest of wills,‚ÄĚ and after much bargaining, the Sinai Interim Agreement (Sinai II),
was formally signed on September 1 and aid resumed.

Vietnam

One of Ford's greatest challenges was dealing with the continued
Conflict in Vietnam. American offensive operations against North
Vietnam had ended with the Paris
Peace Accords, signed on 27 January 1973. The accords declared
a cease fire across both North and South Vietnam, and required the
release of American prisoners of war. A cease-fire was declared
across North and South Vietnam. U.S. POWs were
released. The agreement guaranteed the territorial
integrity of Vietnam and, like
the Geneva Conference of
1954, called for national elections in the North and South.
The Paris Peace Accords stipulated a sixty-day period for the total
withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The accords had been negotiated by United States National
Security Advisor Dr. Henry
Kissinger and North Vietnamese politburo member Le Duc
Tho. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu was not involved in the
final negotiations, and publicly criticized the proposed agreement.
However, anti-war pressures within the United States forced Nixon
and Kissinger to pressure Thieu to sign the agreement and enable
the withdrawal of American forces. In multiple letters to the South
Vietnamese president, Nixon had promised that the United States
would defend his government, should the North Vietnamese violate
the accords.

In December 1974, just months after Ford took office, North
Vietnamese forces invaded the province of Phuoc Long. General TrŠļßn VńÉn Tr√† sought to gauge
any South Vietnamese or American response to the invasion, as well
as to solve logistical issues before proceeding with the
invasion.

As North Vietnamese forces advanced, Ford requested aid for South
Vietnam in a $522 million aid package. The funds had been promised
by the Nixon administration, but Congress voted against the
proposal by a wide margin. Senator Jacob
Javits offered "...large sums for evacuation, but not one
nickel for military aid." President Thieu resigned on April 21,
1975, publicly blaming the lack of support from the United States
for the fall of his country. Two days later, on April 23, Ford gave a
speech at Tulane
University. In that speech, he announced that the
Vietnam War was over "...as far as America is concerned." The
announcement was met with thunderous applause.

1,373
U.S.citizens and 5,595 Vietnamese and third country nationals
were evacuated from the South Vietnamese capitol of Saigon during
Operation Frequent
Wind.Military and Air America helicopters took evacuees
to U.S.Navy
ships off-shore during an approximately 24-hour period on April 29
to 30, 1975, immediately preceding the fall of Saigon. During the operation, so many
South Vietnamese helicopters landed on the vessels taking the
evacuees that some were pushed overboard to make room for more
people. Other helicopters, having nowhere to land, were
deliberately crash landed into the sea, close to the ships, their
pilots bailing out at the last moment to be picked up by rescue
boats. Many of the Vietnamese evacuees were allowed to enter the
United States under the Indochina
Migration and Refugee Assistance Act.

Assassination attempts

Ford
faced two assassination attempts
during his presidency, occurring within three weeks of each other:
while in Sacramento, California on September 5, 1975, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of
Charles Manson, pointed a Colt 45-caliber handgun at Ford. As Fromme pulled the
trigger, Larry Buendorf, a Secret
Service agent, grabbed the gun and managed to insert the webbing of
his thumb under the hammer, preventing the gun from firing. It was
later found that, although the gun was loaded with four cartridges,
it was a semi-automatic pistol
and the slide had not been pulled to place a round in the firing
chamber, making it impossible for the gun to fire. Fromme was taken
into custody; she was later convicted of attempted assassination of
the President and was sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled
on August 14, 2009.

Reaction immediately after the second
assassination attempt.

In
reaction to this attempt, the Secret Service began keeping Ford at
a more secure distance from anonymous crowds, a strategy that may
have saved his life seventeen days later: as he left a hotel in
downtown San Francisco, Sara Jane
Moore, standing in a crowd of onlookers across the street,
pointed her pistol at him. Just before she fired, former
Marine Oliver Sipple grabbed at the
gun and deflected her shot; one person was injured. Moore was later
sentenced to life in prison. She was paroled from prison on
December 31, 2007, having served 32 years.

Post-presidential years, 1977‚Äď2006

Activity

The Nixon pardon controversy eventually subsided. Ford's successor,
Jimmy Carter, opened his 1977 inaugural address by
praising the outgoing President, saying, "For myself and for our
Nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal
our land."

Ford remained relatively active in the years after his presidency
and continued to make appearances at events of historical and
ceremonial significance to the nation, such as presidential
inaugurals and memorial services. In 1977, he reluctantly agreed to
be interviewed by James M. Naughton, a New York Times
journalist who was given the assignment to write the former
President's advance obituary, an article that would be updated
prior to its eventual publication. In 1979, Ford published his
autobiography, A Time to Heal (Harper/Reader's Digest, 454
pages). A review in Foreign Affairs described it as,
"Serene, unruffled, unpretentious, like the author. This is the
shortest and most honest of recent presidential memoirs, but there
are no surprises, no deep probings of motives or events. No more
here than meets the eye."

During the term of office of his successor, Jimmy Carter, Ford
received monthly briefs by President Carter‚Äôs senior staff on
international and domestic issues, and was always invited to lunch
at the White House whenever he was in Washington, D.C. Their close
friendship developed after Carter had left office, with the
catalyst being their trip together to the funeral of Anwar el-Sadat in 1981. Until Ford's death,
Carter and his wife, Rosalynn,
visited the Fords' home frequently. In 2001, Ford and Carter served
as honorary co-chairs of the National
Commission on Federal Election Reform.

Like Presidents Carter, H. W. Bush and Clinton, Ford was an honorary co-chair of the
Council for
Excellence in Government, a group dedicated to excellence in
government performance and which provides leadership training to
top federal employees.

After securing the Republican nomination in 1980, Ronald Reagan
considered his former rival Ford as a potential vice-presidential
running mate, but negotiations between the Reagan and Ford camps at
the Republican
National Convention were unsuccessful. Ford conditioned his
acceptance on Reagan's agreement to an unprecedented
"co-presidency", giving Ford the power to control key executive
branch appointments (such as Henry
Kissinger as Secretary of State and Alan Greenspan as Treasury Secretary). After
rejecting these terms, Reagan offered the vice-presidential
nomination instead to George H. W. Bush.

In October 2001, Ford broke with conservative members of the
Republican party by stating that gay and lesbian couples "ought to
be treated equally. Period." He became the highest ranking
Republican to embrace full equality for gays and lesbians, stating
his belief that there should be a federal amendment outlawing
anti-gay job discrimination and expressing his hope that the
Republican Party would reach out to gay and lesbian voters. He also
was a member of the Republican Unity Coalition, which The New York Times described as "a
group of prominent Republicans, including former President Gerald
R. Ford, dedicated to making sexual orientation a non-issue in the
Republican Party".

On November 22, 2004, New York Republican Governor George Pataki named Ford and the other living
former Presidents (Carter, George H. W. Bush and Bill
Clinton) as honorary members of the board rebuilding the World Trade
Center.

In a pre-recorded embargoed interview
with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in July 2004,
Ford stated that he disagreed "very strongly" with the Bush
administration's choice of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass
destruction as justification for its decision to invade Iraq, calling it a "big mistake" unrelated
to the national security of the United States and indicating that
he would not have gone to war had he been President. The details of
the interview were not released until after Ford's death, as he
requested.

Health problems

As Ford approached his 90th year, he began to experience health
problems associated with old age. He suffered two minor strokes at the 2000 Republican National
Convention, but made a quick recovery after being admitted to
Hahnemann
University Hospital.In January 2006, he spent 11 days at the
Eisenhower
Medical Center near his residence at Rancho
Mirage, California, for treatment of pneumonia. On April 23, President George W.
Bush visited Ford at his home in Rancho Mirage for a little over an
hour. This was Ford's last public appearance and produced the last
known public photos, video footage and voice recording.
While
vacationing in Vail, Colorado, he was hospitalized for two days in July, 2006 for
shortness of breath.On August 15 Ford was admitted to St. Mary's
Hospital of the Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for testing and evaluation. On August 21, it
was reported that he had been fitted with a pacemaker. On August 25, he underwent
an angioplasty procedure at the Mayo
Clinic, according to a statement from an assistant to Ford. On
August 28, Ford was released from the hospital and returned with
his wife Betty to their California home. On October 13, he was
scheduled to attend the dedication of a building of his namesake,
the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, but due to poor health
and on the advice of his doctors he did not attend. The previous
day, Ford entered the Eisenhower Medical Center for undisclosed
tests; he was released on October 16. By November 2006 he was
confined to a bed in his study.

Death

President Ford's tomb at his
Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Gerald R.Ford Council, Boy Scouts of America The council
where he was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout. (Includes the
following Michigan Counties: Allegan, Barry, Ionia, Kent, Lake,
Mason, Mecosta, Montcalm, Muskegon, Newago, and Oceana). Council
Headquarters is located in Walker, Michigan.

Updegrove, Mark K. "Flying Coach to Cairo". AmericanHeritage.com
(August/September 2006). Retrieved on December 31, 2006. "Certainly
few observers in January 1977 would have predicted that Jimmy and I
would become the closest of friends," Ford said in 2000.

Jespersen, T. Christopher. "Kissinger, Ford, and Congress: the
Very Bitter End in Vietnam." Pacific Historical Review
2002 71(3): 439‚Äď473. Issn: 0030-8684 Fulltext: in University of
California; Swetswise; Jstor and Ebsco

Jespersen, T. Christopher. "The Bitter End and the Lost Chance
in Vietnam: Congress, the Ford Administration, and the Battle over
Vietnam, 1975‚Äď76." Diplomatic History 2000 24(2): 265‚Äď293.
Issn: 0145-2096 Fulltext: in Swetswise, Ingenta, Ebsco

Maynard, Christopher A. "Manufacturing Voter Confidence: a
Video Analysis of the American 1976 Presidential and
Vice-presidential Debates." Historical Journal of Film, Radio
and Television 1997 17(4): 523‚Äď562. Issn: 0143-9685 Fulltext:
in Ingenta